INTERVIEW: The Collyer Twins

A look inside: Social Influencers

Miss Portmanteau teamed up with the beautiful Collyer Twins to talk blogging and social media success. They explain what it’s like breaking into the social media world, taking us through some key challenges, career highlights and what’s next in store. The interview is the first in a series that celebrates young entrepreneurs and looks into different career paths and lifestyles.

The adorable duo have built up an Instagram following of 30.9K followers as they upload everything from their breakfasts to their fashion style and travels. As well as being insta-style icons, the twins are also Bloggers, Vloggers, Presenters and DJs.

Miss Portmanteau caught up with them recently to catch up, get their take on social media fame and what’s next.

My very own twin sarnie @ The Plough Way Cafe

Interview:

First of all, congratulations! I’ve followed you since our school days and it feels like a lot has happened lately.

Yes, it’s crazy! Everything seems to have massively fallen into place in the last six months and now everything is sky rocketing! We both quit our full time jobs in social media at the end of last year in August, and at the same time got management and subsequently moved into our new flat in London. So the last six months has been really great.

Our dad unfortunately passed away seven months ago and I think that was a massive wake up call for the two of us, it makes you realise that life is so short and if you’re not waking up every day doing what you love then you’re not really living life to its full potential. After that, everything changed. We are absolutely loving life and feel so blessed, I’m sure my dad would be proud.

You’re represented by Unsigned PR, who have some pretty big clients from Helena Christensen to The Walking Dead’s star Norman Reedus. How did that happen, and how has it influenced your careers so far?

We were introduced to our talent manager at Unsigned about a year and a half ago through a friend. However, we weren’t quite ready to have management then and were still fully focused in our full time jobs. We kept in contact and as our following grew and we concentrated more fully on our blog etc we got back in touch with her. She invited us in to meet her and the team and from there, they took us on!

It has hugely influenced our careers so far. We are now getting paid for jobs we do, whereas before there were a lot of freebies involved. Our manager, Marnie does all the negotiating with fees, it’s what she’s good at. And her contacts in the industry are amazing so its opened up many new doors for us.

Most social media influencers took years to get where they are today. How tough of an industry do you think it is to break into?

It’s quite a tough industry, as it is extremely saturated now. You see social influencers and bloggers all over social media. The thing is, you really do need to have that something that distinguishes you, that makes you stick out from the crowd. That is so important. You need to think ‘why would someone follow me? What would make them want to click on my content as opposed to someone else’s? Once you have that figured, you just need to keep plugging away, its all about consistency.

In terms of challenges, neither of us are very tech-savvy. Filming, photographing and editing videos has been something we’ve had to learn in the past six months in order to be at the same standard as other top influencers out there. Its been fun learning though!

Top piece of advice is staying true to who you are and what you like. It is easy in this industry to be attracted by money and in turn work with brands that you don’t necessary love or that don’t resonate with you. We’ve turned down a lot of jobs before because we didn’t feel the brand was a good fit for us.

The social media world is constantly changing. Companies have finally clicked onto the importance of bloggers and social media in marketing, new apps like Snapchat continue to rise up, I could go on. What are some of the key changes you’ve seen?

Social media is non-stop! We realised that after working in social media agencies for 2 years… There have been so many changes. I think the most recent one for us is the importance of video content and having a presence on Youtube.

A lot of brands and companies are now looking to work with vloggers (Video bloggers) as opposed to just bloggers. So we’ve had to jump on the bandwagon and start a Youtube channel, which we’re working on at the moment. I think video content will work in our favour though, as it’s a way to showcase our personalities!

As the number of social media platforms also keep growing, it’s impossible to keep up with all of them. Do you think it’s important to have a presence across all platforms?

There are always going to be new social platforms and I think it’s important to recognise which will be most beneficial to you and your brand and where the majority of your followers and audience sits.

Our main presence is currently on Instagram which is where we focus the most of our attention. However we also have a Facebook page because we know our parents, grandparents and the older generation use that platform and they like to see what we’re doing too. We’re using our Twitter account less and less these days. And with the introduction of Instagram stories, we don’t even use snapchat anymore.

Youtube is a big one we will be focusing on this year though, and who knows, probably in a year or so, another big platform will come out and we will need to decide whether we focus on that one as well! It’s a very fast- paced and ever evolving industry and you need to keep educated to stay on top!

Blogging, vlogging, DJing and presenting… It’s clear you’re both highly ambitious and have a lot of different passions. How do you balance it all, and what’s next?

We were able to quit our full time jobs six months ago to focus fully on the blogging and Djing, which we had always planned to do and are so happy to have done so!

We love what we do and have made it part of our lives now, so it doesn’t even feel like work, we’re happy to spend our weekends DJing / shooting / editing etc as for us it’s also our hobby.

We are both extremely ambitious and have really big plans, goals and aims for this year. We put together a business plan of where we want to be in the next five years and we won’t stop until we get there. Be prepared for world domination!